Kitabı oku: «A Pessimist in Theory and Practice», sayfa 5

"I do: I am learning. I knew all this in theory, but supposed it ended there. And your Princess, you think is of our society?"

"No root of nobleness is lacking in her; when the season comes, the plants will spring and the garden bloom. But we cannot expect to understand her fully; she is of finer clay than we."

"One thing more, and then I will let you go. There is more of you than I thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide your inmost self from all but me?"

"Because I've got to convert you, old man. It is a poor instrument that has but a single string; and David's harp of solemn sound would bore me as much as it would other folks, if I tried to play on it all the time. How many people would sit out this talk of ours, or read it if we put it in print? Taken all in all, the light fantastic measure suits me much better. To see all sides, we must take all tones. The varying moods within fit the varying facts without; to get at truth we must give each its turn. But in the main it is best to take Life lightly. Your error was that you were too serious about it: it's not worth that. Most things are chiefly fit to laugh at. The highgrand style will do once in a way: we've worked it too hard now. Let's come down to earth. I wanted to show you that I could do the legitimate drama as well as you, and yet wear a tall hat and dress for dinner. See?"

"That's all very well, Bob, but I can discriminate between your seriousness and your farce. Perhaps it is well to mix them, or to take them as they are mixed for us. You may be right in that; I'll think it over. Yes, I can see now that Heraclitus overdoes it, and that I used to. Well, my lad, you are a queer professor of ethics; but I'm not sure you've brought me to the wrong school."

XII.
AWAKENING

The next day Clarice took me off as usual. "Well, have you made any more blunders?"

"Not one. You have nothing to reproach me with this time, Czarina."

"You kept Mr. Hartman up dreadfully late. What were you talking about so long?"

"O, he is prepared to find you wonderful, and to come to time whenever you want him. I told him your wings weren't grown yet: you were the Sleeping Beauty in the Enchanted Palace; the hour and the man hadn't arrived. You dwelt in maiden meditation, and the rest of it."

"You did not cheapen me, surely, Robert?"

"God forbid: do I hold you cheap, that I should rate you so to others? He may tell you every word I said, when you begin to turn him inside out; there was none of it that you or I need be ashamed of. He knows, both by his own observation and from my clear and impressive narrative, that you are remote and inaccessible – the edelweiss growing high up in its solitude, where only the daring and the elect can find its haunt."

"That is very neat. Did it take you three hours to tell him that? I heard you come in as it struck two."

"Too bad to disturb your slumbers, Princess: we will take our boots off outside, next time. Naturally you were the most important topic we could discuss; but I also explained his advantages in being thrown so much into my own society. O, he is getting on. He said – "

"I don't want to know what he said. The man is here, and I can see – and hear, when I choose – for myself. Do you think I would tempt you to violate what might be a confidence, Robert?"

"But if I repeat to you what I said, why not what he said? – except that his observations would not be so powerful and suggestive as mine, of course. Otherwise I don't see the difference."

"Now that is stupid, Bob. The difference is that you belong to me, and he doesn't – as yet."

I can't tell you how she says these things. If I could put on paper the tone, the toss of that lovely head, the smile, the sparkle of eyes and lips, that go with what you might call these little audacities, then you would know how they not only accent and punctuate the text, but supply whole commentaries on it. If you get a notion that the Princess is capable of boldness, or vulgar coquetry, or any of the faults of her sex or of ours, you are away off the track, and my engineering must have gone wrong. But I must stop this and get back to my report.

"One thing I must repeat, Princess. I got off a lot of wisdom for Jim's benefit. You wouldn't think how wise it was; deep principles of human nature, and rules for the conduct of life, and such. It did him no end of good: and then he said that if I didn't talk to you that way, you couldn't know me as well as he does."

"He must know you remarkably well then. Just like a man's conceit. Poor Bob, who should know you through and through if I don't? – Why don't you talk to me that way then, and improve me too?"

"As the Scotchwoman said when they asked her if she understood the sermon, Wad I hae the presumption? When you catch me taking on airs and trying to improve you, make a note of it. No, no, Princess dear; the lecturing and improving between us had better remain where they are."

"But, Robert, perhaps I would like to have you vary this continual incense-burning with snatches of something else."

"I dare say. Do you know, Clarice, sometimes I think I am an awful fool about you."

"That is what the doctors call a congenital infirmity, my dear. No use lamenting over what you can't help. Worship me as much as you like; it keeps you out of mischief. But you might change the tune now and then, and give me some of your alleged wisdom."

"Shall I becloud that pure and youthful brow with metaphysic fumes? Should I soil your dainty muslins with the antique dust of folios, and oil from the midnight lamp? You wait till you take up Hartman; perhaps you can stand it from him. But if I were to hold forth to you in the style he prefers, you would get sick of me in twenty minutes. Let it suffice that my lonely vigils are spent in severe studies and profound meditations, the fruit whereof, in a somewhat indirect and roundabout way, may make smooth and safe the path that is traversed by your fairy feet. In the expressive language of the poet, Be happy; tend thy flowers; be tended by my blessing."

"I know about your lonely vigils, Bob; they are spent on cigars, and making up jokes to use next morning. But you are not as bad as usual to-day. Do you know, I like you better when you are comparatively serious."

"Then let me be ever thus, my Queen! It is the solemnizing influence of being so much with you. If you keep it up for another week, you'll have to send me off to New York to get secularized. I say, Clarice, how long do you mean to go on in this way? It's all very nice for me, but how about Hartman? He's not frivolous; he takes Life in awful earnest. What do you propose to do with him after you've got him – I should say, after the fatal dart has transfixed his manly form, and he falls pierced and bleeding at your feet?"

"My dear child, let me tell you a pretty little tale. Once upon a time there was a friend of mine, who thought a good deal of me, and of whom I thought more than he knew, poor man – enough to make you jealous, Bob." – Now who the devil was that, confound him? I never heard of him before. It must have been that winter she spent in Boston, just after she came out. That's over five years ago; he's probably dead or married before this. Well, get on with your pretty little tale: not that I see much prettiness about it. – "And when I would tease him to tell me some secret, he would answer, in his own well-chosen language. Some day you will know: you wait and see. By-by, baby!" – and away she dashed.

My tongue went too fast last night. Her heart is waking; her wings are sprouting. She must be getting interested in Jim. The hour is at hand, and the man: the horn at the castle-gate will soon be sounded, and presto! the transformation scene. That will be a spectacle for gods and men, now; but no tickets will be sold at the doors – admittance only by private card, and that to a very select few. I don't want any change in you, Princess; but I suppose the angels would like to see the depths in you that you haven't sounded, the fairer and wider chambers of your soul opened to the light. God grant that light may need no darkness to come before it, no storm-tossed, doubtful daybreak. If the change is for your happiness, no matter about us. You are moving toward a land where I cannot follow you; a land of mystery and wonder and awakening, of new beauties and glories and perils, and possibilities unknown and infinite – a journey wherein you can have no guide but your own pure instincts, no adviser but your own untried heart. God be with you, for Jane and Mabel can do no more than I. We shall hear no word from you till all be over, and then the Clarice of old will return to us no more. Transfigured she may be and beatified, but not the one we knew and loved so long. Little sister, all these years I have been at your side or ready at your call, and now you will not call and I cannot come to help you; for in these matters the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy. May it be joy and not the other! God be with them both, for it is a dangerous country where they are going; a region of mists and pitfalls and morasses, where closest friends may be rudely severed, and those whom Heaven hath joined be put asunder by their own most innocent errors – and the finest spirits run the heaviest risk. Ah well, if I were the Grand Duke of Gerolstein, maybe things would be better managed in my dominions.

XIII.
DOMESTIC CRITICISMS

Hartman has made a first-rate impression here. It would please you to see this stern ascetic, this despiser of Life and Humanity, with two toddlers on his lap, and Herbert at his knee, all listening open-mouthed to tales of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The boy thinks that one who lives in the woods must be a great hunter, and clamors for bears and wildcats: Jane, in her usual unfeeling way, insists that I put him up to this. But though I am a family man – and you could not easily find one more exemplary – I do not propose to drag the nursery into the cold glare of public comment, or favor you with a chapter on the Management of Children.

I would like to know why it is that women are so ready to take up with any chance stranger who comes along, when they cannot see the true greatness of their own nearest and dearest. Mabel pronounces Hartman a perfect gentleman and a safe companion for me; as if it were I, not he, that needed looking after. Jane seems to regard him as the rock which withstands the tempest, the oak round which the vine may safely cling, and that sort of thing. He is a good-looking fellow yet, and he has a stalwart kind of bearing, adapted to deceive persons who do not know him as well as I do. They would almost side with him against Clarice – but not quite: in their hearts, they think her perfect.

One evening we were all together in the parlor. The Princess had gone somewhere with one of her numerous adorers, whom she had failed to bluff off as she generally does: the young man was going to cast himself into the sea, I believe, and I told her she had better let him and be done with it, but she said he had a widowed mother and several sisters, and ought to live long enough to leave them comfortably provided for; so I let her go. I was trying to direct the conversation into improving channels, but the frivolous female mind is too much for me.

"Mr. Hartman," Jane began, "we rely on you to exercise a good influence upon Robert. He is so light-minded, and so deceitful."

"Yes," Mabel added; "no one can restrain him but Clarice, and she cannot spend her whole time upon him, she has so much else to do."

"See here," said I; "this is a put-up job: I will have you all indicted for conspiracy. Have you no proper respect for the head of the house?"

"We would like to," my spouse replied: "we make every effort: but it is so difficult! Mr. Hartman, he wants to manage every little matter, particularly those which pertain exclusively to women, and which he cannot understand at all."

"Yes," said Jane; "would you believe it, Mr. Hartman, he attempted to instruct us as to the proper manner of receiving you! But that is not the worst of it. He is utterly unable to keep a secret – not that any one would entrust him with secrets of the least importance, of course. And when he thinks he knows something that we do not know, he goes about looking so solemn that even Herbert can detect him at once. And in such cases he actually comes to us, and questions us about the matter, with a view to throwing us off the scent, and keeping dark, as he calls it. Did you ever hear of such absurdity?"

"Ladies and gentleman," I said with dignity, "would you mind excusing me for a few moments? I would like to retire to the rocks outside, and swear a bit."

"Robert!" my wife cried, "I am ashamed of you. What will Mr. Hartman think of your morals?" You see, they think Jim is a very correct young man.

"O, I know him of old," he said. "Never mind, Bob, I will stand by you. Really, you are a little hard on him. He has improved; I assure you he has. Why, he was quite a cub at college. Your softening influences have done a great deal for him; everything, in fact."

"It is very nice in you to say so, Mr. Hartman, and very polite, and very loyal; but I know Robert. Clarice does him a little good: she would do very much more, if he were not so stiff-necked. He thinks he is a man, and we are only women."

"Well," I asked, "are you going to dispute that proposition? If so, I will leave Hartman to argue it out with you."

"Mr. Hartman," said Jane, "he thinks he knows everything, and women are inferior creatures. O, such a superior being as he is!"

"This is getting monotonous," I remarked. "Suppose, for a change, we abuse Clarice, as she is not here; that will be pleasanter all round, and less unconventional. Now that girl does a great deal of harm, turning the heads of so many foolish young men. She spends more on her dress than you and I do together, Hartman. What an aim in life for a rational being! Simply to look pretty, and produce an occasional piece of perfectly idle and useless embroidery: tidies even, now and then – just think of it! Of all the – "

My wife stopped me here, and I was glad of it, for I really did not know what to say next.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Robert. To speak in that way of my cousin, and your own adopted sister! Don't believe a word of it, Mr. Hartman. She is sweet girl, though reserved with strangers: I am sorry you have seen so little of her. A high-minded, pure-hearted, dear, sweet, lovely girl; she is, and you know it, Robert." Well, perhaps I do; but there is no need of my saying so just now. Jane has to put in her oar again, of course.

"Yes, Mr. Hartman, and that is a sample of his hypocrisy. He thinks as highly of Clarice as we do, and is almost as fond of her; and yet he pretends to criticize her, just to draw away attention from his own shortcomings."

"Well, let's drop Clarice then, and go on discussing the present company, if you insist. We'll take them up one by one: I've had my turn, and my native modesty shrinks from further praise. You see Mrs. T., Hartman? She sits there looking so calm and placid, like a mother in Israel; you would think her a model spouse. Yet no one knows what I suffer. Mabel, I had not been with him ten minutes last May when he noticed my premature baldness, and general fagged-out and jaded look; and to hide the secrets of my prison-house, I had to pretend that I had been working too hard in Water Street. You all know how painful deception is to my candid nature; but I did it for your sake, Mabel. When did I ever return aught but good for evil? Yet O, the curtain lectures, the manifold ways in which the iron has entered into my soul! But we brought Hartman here to reconcile him to civilized and domestic life, and I will say no more. Now there is Jane. She naturally puts her best foot foremost in company; you think she is all she seems: but I could a tale unfold. Now mark my magnanimity: I won't do it. She is my sister, and with all her faults I love her still. Well, if you are tired you'd better go to bed: Hartman wants to smoke."

XIV.
OVER TWO CIGARS

When we got out under the pure breezes of heaven, Hartman turned to me and said, "So you call this reconciling me to domestic life, do you?"

"Well, I want you to see things as they are. They are not as bad as your fancy used to paint them, or as a duller man might suppose from recent appearances. Women haven't our sense of humor, Jim: their humble efforts at jocosity are apt to be exaggerated, or flat – generally both; but they mean no harm."

"Well, Bob, your preparations to instruct my ignorance are highly successful. All this is as good as a play. You see you are found out, old humbug; everybody sees through you. You can't delude any of us any more."

"I don't quite see what you're driving at, my christian friend; but I'm glad you like us, and I hope you'll like us better before you are done with us." When he talks like this, I am content to see the hand of Fate snatch at his scalp, as it will before long. Gibe on, ungrateful mocker: retribution will soon overtake you in your mad career. Where then will be your gibes, your quips, your quiddities? You'll want my sympathy by and by, and I'll see about giving it.

"You needn't be so much cast down, Bob. Perhaps you are building me up better than you know. Your struggles with your womankind give a flavor to what I used to suppose must be insipid. You are pretty well satisfied with each other, or you wouldn't pretend to quarrel so. What I saw of you before did something toward reconciling me to human nature at large, and your quaint efforts at shrewdness and finesse set off your real character. You might take in outsiders, but not me."

"This is too much, my friend – a blanked sight too much. Crushed to earth by such unmerited compliments, I can only repeat my gratification that we meet with your approval. You settle down, and you'll see how insipid it is: then you'll be making some quaint efforts at shrewdness and finesse yourself. Invite me then, and I'll get even with you, old man. But I say, what did you mean about my being a cub at college?"

"Well, you were, you know. Barmaids and ballet-dancers, and that sort of thing."

"Confound you, Hartman, what do you go bringing them up for? There was only one of each, or thereabouts, and they were generally old enough to be my mothers. I was but a child, Jim – a guileless, merry, high-hearted boy, and innocent as the lamb unshorn."

"You were that, and the shearing did you a lot of good. O, you can be easy; I'll not bring up the sins of your youth."

"They were no sins, only follies. I had my early Pendennis stage, of course, and invested every woman I met with the hues of imagination. But Mabel and the girls might not understand that."

"I don't think they would. Happily, it is not necessary they should try to, since you have returned to the path of rectitude. Do you think you belonged to Our Society in those days, Bob?"

"Yes, sir: I did, in embryo. I had it in me to develop into the ornament of our species you behold at present. That's all a boy is good for, anyway. He thinks he's somebody, but he isn't. He doesn't amount to anything, except in the fond hopes of his anxious parents. He knows nothing, and he can do nothing, except learn by his blunders; and some of 'em can't do that. But if he has any stuff in him, he grows and ripens with time, as you and I did. What bosh, to put the prime of life at twenty-five. They ought to move it on a bit; about our age, now, a man ought to be at his best."

"I don't know, Bob. I was an egregious ass at twenty-five, and I'm not sure I'm any better now."

"Then there's hope of you, my boy. But one must go on getting experience. You shut the door too soon and too tight, Jim."

"When I had it open, such an infernal stench and dust came in, that it seemed best to close it. But it's open again now, partly, and this seems a healthier and cleaner atmosphere."

"You'll come out all right, Jim; and when you do, you won't seem to have been altogether wrong all these years. You've kept yourself unspotted from the world, more than most of us; and when you come to know a girl like Clarice, you'll want the most and best of you, to be fit for her society. If only one could get the general ripening without some of the dashed details of the process! She makes you wish you could have been brought up in a bandbox, if only you could have come out of it a man and not a mollycoddle."

"Only 'men-maidens in their purity' are worthy to approach her, no doubt. Apparently I am not. I'll have to be content with your account of Miss Elliston's perfections, Robert. She seems to have no more use for me than the Texans for the Sheriff. But I am doing very nicely, thanks to your sister. I doubt if you appreciate Miss Jane, Bob. She sees further into things than you do. She impresses me as a sound-hearted woman, wise, kind, and gracious."

"Yes, and so sisterly and appreciative. O yes, such a superior person as she is! But see here, Jim; that's not what you're here for. Jane is all very well in her way, but – "

He turned on me suddenly. "What the deuce do you mean now?"

By Jove, now I've done it: he's got me in a corner. – You just wait and see me get out of it. "O well, Jim, I speak only by general analogy, of course. I am not in the Princess's confidence, as I told you. I might be if any one were, but nobody can see into her mind further than she chooses to let them, and that is but a very little way. It would be a fine sight, no doubt; but she has the reticence of a – well, of an angel probably; exceptionally delicate and sensitive nature, and all that, you know. It's not her way to let a good thing go by unnoticed, and she is quite able to appreciate you. Your time is not up yet: you're likely to see more of her before you go – at least, I should suppose so."

"Well, I am here to see things, as you say, and I may as well see whatever is to be shown me. I am in your hands, old man; make as good a job of it as you can before you send me back to the woods."

It is all very well for him to talk lightly on solemn subjects; he'll change his tone by and by. I have prepared his mind now, as I prepared the others before he came. Perhaps I ought to have done it sooner; perhaps the Princess has been waiting for that. She'll know, without my telling her; she'll see it in his eye. – Nonsense, Robert T.; your zeal outruns your discretion. What does she want of your help in a thing like this? Anyway, he's ready to be operated on, and it seems about time she began to put in her work.